Church bashing, pagan priestesses, and religious pluralism – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1982) has it all. Offering yet another take on the Arthurian legend, Bradley’s fantasy has been praised for its feminist narrative and honored with its own miniseries on basic cable (2001).

The strongest women of Avalon – all devotees of the mother goddess – hold the destiny of the High King in their hands while fending off the dual threats of Saxon invasion and Christian conversion. The “official” version of the new religion gaining ground in Arthur’s world is cold, misogynistic, hypocritical, and meddlesome. Not all is gloom and doom, however. Bradley, in the voice of Morgaine, offers hope by uniting the two religions under one Gnostic banner. If Morgaine has her way, the most enlightened heirs of Camelot will understand that the Christian God and the Celtic goddess are male and female aspects of a single, nameless Divine. The good old days are behind us, she laments, but the goddess survives in the guise of Mary, mother of Jesus.

In 1945, several leather-bound codices were recovered from an earthen jar at the base of Jebel al-Tarif, across the Nile from the town of Nag Hammadi. The “library,” as it came to be called, was a treasure trove of Gnostic writings.

Mimi Doe is in much demand as a parenting “guru” of sorts. On her web site she offers a definition of spirituality in general, and spiritual parenting in particular.[1] According to Doe,

Spirituality is the consciousness that relates us directly to God, or whatever we name as the source of our being. That consciousness can be activated when we are making a mud pie, singing a lullaby, observing a spider web, or deep in meditation.

and

Spiritual parenting occurs when we expand our awareness to include our children’s vivid inner lives. When we approach our kids as grand spiritual beings housed in little bodies we are parenting spiritually. Spiritual parenting is not limited to any one religion’s teachings but rather is an authentic, honest way of interacting with our children day to day.